Building Businesses: The Long & Short
The journey required to build a business is very similar to life, albeit shorter, more condensed and offering the opportunity to experience multiple journeys in one’s lifetime.
I say this to communicate (and remind myself) that building a business could be a big part of one’s life if that is the path one chooses. It also has many overlaps in experience and emotion to life in general. But I would be glib to suggest that both these things are equally significant or meaningful.
On that backdrop, I face a recurring question which I struggle to answer wholly:
Building a business takes time and long-term thinking. To reach the summits of our imaginations and mission, we need to invest our time, focus, energy, creativity, etc. into this endeavour. Either you are all-in, or you are out.
But considering that almost all of those investable resources are finite, we end up making compromises and sacrifices in the shorter-term, as we instead prioritise the reward at the end of the long-term rainbow. We quickly compromise on our hobbies, health and closest relationships with the idea that we can come back to those things once we cross the finish line. At the finish line, we believe we’ll have fewer constraints on our resources, which means we don’t have to make the same compromises and sacrifices then.
Unfortunately, our mortality determines that many of us might not have a long enough time horizon to do these things sequentially. So what does that mean today?
In reading When Breath Becomes Air in the last 24 hours, I remember my uneasiness with my mortality.
In plain English: I am scared of dying.
Not the act or experience thereof, but that I will either die not being able to have a better (at least, more coherent) answer for the above question. Or worse, that I get the answer only to realise that I screwed up many decisions along the way.
What I know today is that there was a time in my life (when I was younger and perhaps felt invincible), where I was happy — and maybe even passionate — about reinvesting into this ambitious, long-term plan for my entrepreneurial life at the direct expense of compromises and sacrifices in the now.
I have recently gotten much better at this: I try to be more present in more moments and experiences in my life while navigating from one moment to the next with an evolving clarity of my values. This has helped me tremendously and today — even as I type this — this brings about a certain amount of calm. Today I am doing the best I can do today.
That however only partially answers my question of what that means for the entrepreneur in me today. On the one hand, I truly believe in taking the longest-term view to building a business, as that prevents panicky short-term decision-making. And I know that requires investment. But this still needs work; me sitting at my desk, doing the work. Which is ultimately at the expensive of anything else.
I also know that there is no way to avoid this delicate balance entirely: there is no work or life (that requires balance); there is only life.
I believe the trick is being aware of that delicate balance at any moment and then learning how to navigate those moments to its full benefit best.
I also hope that I have enough time to learn that trick.
As an aside to this, I believe “building businesses” in this context can be replaced with the pursuit of any professional career or endeavour. The supposed duality is in doing one thing to earn a living and wanting actually to live.
If you enjoyed this story, please recommend by clicking on the ❤ below. :)
Other things you can do to show your love:
- Get all of my new content in your inbox (sign up above).
- Share this story on Twitter / Facebook / everywhere.
- Follow me and / or this publication.
